Poole Aegean pot

Poole Aegean pot

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Poole Aegean pot - 3¾" (95 mm) high.

Poole, in Dorset, due to the abundance locally of good red clay, had
long been a centre for the making of pottery when Jesse Carter bought James
Walker's tile manufacturing company in 1873. In 1895, Carter & Co. took
over the Architectural Pottery Company in Hamworthy. The wares produced
then were mainly floor and wall tiles, architectural decorations, shop fascias.
Owen Carter, Jesse's son, developed the production of art pottery with different
glazes, and by the time of the first World War, the company was making a
wide range of decorative wares.

Expansion followed and after Owen's death in 1919, his brother Charles
found it difficult to meet the ever increasing demand for the company's
products. He discussed the matter with his friend, Harold Stabler, and Stabler
persuaded the Stoke potter John Adams to move down to Poole. The partnership
of Carter, Stabler and Adams was born in 1921.

It could be said that the thirties were Poole's heyday. Some of the most
memorable designs come from that time. Truda Carter, Charles's wife, and
John Adams produced a succession of outstanding patterns that have become
classics.

The forties were something of a black hole. Wartime restrictions curtailed
production severely, and by the start of the following decade most of the
original design team had retired or died. A new managing director, Lucien
Myers, took the Poole Pottery into the fifties, and again the company was
in the forefront with their new 'contemporary' designs that really characterized
the Britain of the fifties.

The designs of the sixties and seventies were a complete departure from
anything that had gone before. The paintresses were allowed a free hand,
and their abstract patterns were, as in previous eras, exactly right for
the time. These patterns defined the look of the sixties and were enormously
popular. As with most extreme fashions, they were to become passé,
and the bright orange, yellow and brown pieces were often hidden or discarded
in the following decades. A revival of interest in the nineties, though,
has seen the prices paid for these item rocket. Looking at the designs from
a viewpoint where they are neither fashionable nor unfashionable, they are
outstandingly good.

Poole Pottery continues to flourish and to produce wares that are right
for the time. There is a thriving collectors' club, and interest does not
flag.

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